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28 Responses to “Heroes of Newerth Discussion Station”

HoN is a great game with lots of attention to detail. The only real issue I have with it is that it brought all the immature DotA players with it which makes public games not fun to play. The one thing I would love to see added is some kind of co-op mode vs AI or a tower defense type of map.

I agree with Nemoder, it is a great game. Though I would love the attention I get by playing bad and being new to be helpful. For example, at my first game I was asked to leave it because I died at stupid situations..

I also agree with Nemoder and neshaug, it really is a great game but there are a few idiots which just don’t realize the beta tag on the client…

Nevertheless the client is already very polished and well done, especially the UI is extremely fast, which is an important thing to me. At least it’s already a nice game, and hopefully they will also activate the LAN mode soon so it will be the burner on the next LAN :)

I’m also new to this gametype. The hon forums have a section for guides on specific heroes but the basics for new players are:

If you get hurt run back to a tower or the fountain to heal up, don’t try to fight it out. Low health = easy target.
Never cross the river alone even if it looks clear as enemies will sneak up on you before you can retreat.
Stay in your lane near the creeps as a long as possible so you can get XP from their deaths. Buying health regen relics or potions will help a lot so you don’t have to run back to fountain all the time.
Keep an eye on the minimap, if you don’t see any enemy dots they may be all hiding in the forest right next to you so try to run away.

But basically just try to stay alive, don’t worry about getting kills until you’ve mastered how to keep up with levels early on.

In agreement with the rest of ‘em. I haven’t had an opportunity to play it much, but I watched a friend who also got a beta key play and he was very annoyed at the general maturity level of most of the players – which is magnified by the VOIP. I’m sure VOIP is a necessary thing for coordinated team work, but man would I get sick of hearing most of those guys shine their own knobs.

I was disappointed that the local games were available, I’d much rather be playing locally with my friends than online with a bunch of prepubescent alpha-males.

Good:
1) Just like DotA, teamwork is 50%, hero is 50%
2) built in ping/banlist
3) no port forwarding needed to host
4) I think they host the server, makes everyone lag fairly (even host)
5) Native Win/Mac/Linux, I believe this will make a less buggy game. By using multiple platforms the ‘corner cases’ of 1 OS can be used a lot by another OS. I believe NWN because a lot more stable when they release the Linux client a year later.
6) there is a vote ‘Concede’ option (I had to go to menu to find it), useful to end early but not let everyone down.
7) Chat room is made for each game so even after the game is over the bitching can continue!
8) no more remembering items for a recipe, just follow through the levels.
9) haven’t crashed or frozen up while in game (about 5), for beta they have done a good job so far.

Bad:
1) JUST like DotA where if you have 1 feeder you all get to lose. Once you start down the fail path just bend over.
2) On my Ath64 2800+, 1.5gb ram, GF5900GTX, Ubuntu 9.04 AMD64 I can play 1v1 no problem, but 5v5 takes 2+minutes to load (seriously) and is noticeably delayed during game play (says I need to target with spell but I am!). I have a Tri core and a MB with onboard ATi3300 (cross fingers for good ATi Linux support) in the mail, hey maybe I can enable grass in NWN too now!
3) no lan play from what I can tell. My friends come over and it would be nice to not need all 4 of us to connect out. Also at large LAN parties would be nice to play local.
4) if S2 does in fact host it, then if they shut down or have problems we will have a 500mb garbage directory

I will have better judgment about visuals when my new computer comes in, playing 800×600 with everything off and low settings does not give it justice.

Provided this game is less than $50 I will buy/preorder without hesitation, the more over than that it is the more I will have to think it over. My friend says he will pay $100 as long as ALL platforms are the same, none of that Sacred Windows=$10 Linux=$50 stuff (I paid $50, I want more RPG games for Linux…)

I plan to go play some DotA games every time I get some keys to hand them out to ‘cool’ players, like those that stay till the end even if it is 5v3, or just those that call mia :-)

Thanks for the beta key. This game has great graphics. I’m really liking S2 as a Linux publisher. The game itself can be pretty fun. I come at this game as a total newbie.

As a newbie I can say that the Shop system is really complicated though. It’s hard to try to shop and play in real time especially as a newbie. The more time you spend shopping the faster you fall behind as everyone else levels up and puts you at a huge disadvantage.

I also didn’t find any full guides on the forums that tell you what everything actually does. Just the basic guidelines (not what the stats actually do for example Strength vs Damage, Intelligence, Cast Speed, how Mana regeneration point increase works vs Mana regeration percentage rate thinks like that). There’s a lot of information you have no idea what to do with and it makes shopping worse. Apparently there will be a tutorial in game eventually which hopefully may explain it all. But right now you just basically jump right in.

Also expect frequent verbal abuse from non newbies on your own team in public games. There should be a quicker way to ignore people than typing commands. Apparently most of the games labeled for noobs are just there for good players to beat them badly to pad their playing stats, as well.

One thing I wish RTS style games would experiment with is more simultaneous players. 5v5 is an ok step but the target always seems to be around 30 minute games and few players. That’s fine but some like me would like to experiment with bigger and longer games and would at least like that option and one or two maps for that. But this is a beta so who knows what will happen with that. I expect it won’t change though.

It could use a lot more gameplay mechanics experimentation (maybe from modding) and some more creative game modes would be nice too.

All in all, the state of the game beta looks like it’s pretty much complete and just needs finishing touches. I’m blown away how good it looks with such a small disk space footprint. Every Linux gamer should get a Linux copy IMO, try it out, and help support S2 which even if you don’t like the game, you can tell what a great job they’re doing for native gaming on Linux.

Great game. At last I can enjoy to the fullest my sli nvidia to the full. Looks very nice, very responsive.
It has negative sides too, but for hardcore gamer like me – there is nothing better than this game since times of ETQW.
S2, keep up good work, hopefully your intentions will pay off with all those Linux and Mac users.
Grab invitation off their site, you can easily become beta tester.

Just played it for the first time (thanks for the Beta Key!). Great graphics and sound. Many types of units (something I wish Savage 2 had more of). Heck, even the other players were nice to me as a noob (big thanks to “Sunshine”). BUT, it is a very complicated game that does little to help you learn along the way (currently). People say Savage 2 has a steep learning curve, and I picked that up easily. HoN is complicated at a whole new level. I really wish there were more tooltips and voice instructions giving you hints when you start out. Tips like Savage 2’s loading screen ones would go a long way, too. Most players seemed to assume you were a previous Dota player and were amazed when I said I hadn’t played it, yet was playing HoN.

Overall, it’s looking like a really great game shaping up. Just be prepared for a very steep learning curve and not a lot of help or tutorials with which button / item / recipe / unit does what. Oh, and just know in advance, dying often will piss your team mates off as it rewards the enemy team with gold. Better to get out of the fight and heal.

just did a quick search on “dota strategy” and http://sagedota.blogspot.com/ looks like some good general tips. The hero descriptions won’t help much , but my general guideline:

agi: in general build for damage. If the other team does not have a lot of stun get some life draining items. crit does not hurt to get. If you do a lot of AOE with spells get an item to give you AOE, if you are a single target assassin get a stun (basher in dota) or something to hold them (ally with hold is good) while you beat the life out of them.

str: generally build for hp + damage. If you are the only str hero go for defense. If they are mainly melee attack go for the shield (Vanguard in dota), if they are magic go for the magic resist item. Cleave is normally good, you should be ‘giving them the business’ close up anyhow trying to protect the agi/int. If you are mostly str heros just get str items with some HP regen (the cleave item does this), that should make you last 30 seconds in a battle and that is all you need most of the time.

int: disable disable disable. crowd control is your game, nuke them, if they are the tank sheep them, run a bit, then nuke them again! If they are agi sheep then nuke, they will most likely die. Sometimes int heros have enough natural mana and their slepps are good enough to just buy life items, in dota is was always fun to have more HP than the tank, doing massive AOE damage, while the team tries to kill you. Still in general you need to be able to disable/run or disable/attack or just disable that agi who bought all damage and expected to live off of regen.

One of the good things I like about DotA is almost every game needs a different build. Some agi can make tanks, some str can do massive damage, some characters are mainly support, sometimes you build regen, sometimes lifesteal.

Whatever you do try not to feed, call top/mid/bot mia (missing in action) as that tends to indicate a gank on that lane that is not mia, and try to focus fire on 1 target during fights, preferably the damage/disabler/buffer/healer.

These are my DotA tips, 95% should carry over to HoN and the way you play you may find otherwise.

Well decided to search the forum:
1) Win7 had an issue with bad load times when vsync was enabled
2) There is sometimes a problem with PulseAudio.

I have problems with Jets n Guns lagging on startup, every time PulseAudio is using 100% CPU, a PulseAudio restart fixes it 1/3 of the time. I plan to check vsync and kill PulseAudio soon as I get time to test it. I would like to know if that helps you (and post under the Linux client on the forum if it does as well)

To those who have problems, its still is beta. My amd64 6000, dual core is constantly in 1-3 place on loading times. I have 4 gig of ram however. If you have low ram and slow HDD(not my case) you will have slow loads.

If you want to be beta tester – let me know, i can try to send you invite.
dimko _ at _ dimko DOT eu

Do not use pulse audio(on ubuntu by default), its sucks, instead, kill pulse audio all together and use native drivers, I use ALSA and live happy life.

I’m running in Ubuntu 9.04 and it runs great. I typically am the first one in the game so no problems on my end. I haven’t played the WC3 mod so I’m totally new. The game to me is very complicated even though I understand the basics. I have experienced that if you die a few times especially early on, then you will never be able to catch up both with money and levels.

I think this game is geared toward a very nitch market … very competitive players. If this game only has this style of pvp, then I’m not interested in buying it. If they have co-op against the computer, then it might be worth getting since the graphics are very nice.